


Maybe it's time I try for more

by crookedspoon



Series: i fear no fate [4]
Category: DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gift Fic, Grief/Mourning, Justmarried Treat, Kissing, M/M, Survivor Guilt, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 04:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19863265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: Dick travels back in time to fix the mistake that has been haunting him for years.





	Maybe it's time I try for more

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mlraven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlraven/gifts).



> Although this is a standalone, I also consider it an alternative sequel to my yj sadfic (the first in this series).
> 
> Many thanks to Shu for the awesome beta!

Dick is in control of his emotions. He knows the dangers of what he is about to do and has decided they are well worth it. He has lived with this crushing guilt for long enough. He can't go on like this anymore. 

He is not even guaranteed that any of this works.

But on the off-chance that it does, he won't have much time to complete the task he's given himself once he enters the timestream. It's easier to think of what he needs to accomplish as a task like any other he's been assigned throughout his lifetime, no personal stakes involved. It gives him the necessary distance required for success. Either he rids himself of the source of the guilt, or he dies trying.

The room is dim, its only illumination four candles casting a glow on a bronze bowl. The darkness suits him for once; he's never been able to find solace in it the way Bruce could, but tonight he might come close.

Beside him, a Robin costume lies folded. Dick fingers the hole in it— _holes,_ stacked almost on top of one another, a sliver of canary yellow shining through—ignoring the feeling that wants to carve him hollow. There's nothing left in him to chip away anymore.

Dick might not even have a soul to hurt after tonight. It could get trapped somewhere along the timestream. Time travel is never safe. He might not even end up at the point in time he is aiming for. Jason's uniform is to help guide him to the day that has viscerally burned itself into Dick's memory.

The uniform has been cleaned in an effort to rid it of the memories it carries, yet even Alfred couldn't erase all traces of blood around the holes. In the Batcave, Bruce keeps a pristine version of the uniform on display in a glass case, like a monument to a fallen soldier. Perhaps it's easier to frame Jason's death in that manner, not as a lost son but as a young person who has given his life in service. Perhaps it's a reminder to be better, to not let Jason's death be in vain, to not let it happen to anyone ever again. Perhaps it's the only way Bruce can feel close to Jason: through disguise.

He doesn't have what Dick has—a stack of journal entries Leslie tasked Jason to write. Dick hasn't showed them to anyone. It's selfish of him, he's aware of that, but at the same time it's not his place to share them. They fell into his possession by accident, and while it was no accident that he decoded and read them all, they feel like too much of a private correspondence between Jason and him, one-sided though it is, for anyone's eyes but his. What began as a simple exercise in anger management soon became a treatise on Jason's developing feelings for Dick. He would be mortified to know Dick had read any of it, let alone all of it.

He's been carrying those words around with him, close to his heart, as if they could stop the bleeding ache of his grief. Now he's gathered them inside the bowl. Every word that Jason has ever written about him. The good, the bad, and the heartbreakingly beautiful.

Dick Grayson. Fucking hate that guy. . . . 

He may be gifted in the looks department but man, what a dumbass. . . . 

I hate how pretty he is. . . . 

Being close to him makes my heart feel funny. I think I'll need to see a specialist. . . . 

If I could get one kiss from him, I would die happy. . . .

Dick cuts his palm, lets his blood blot out some of the words as it drips onto the sheets of paper. Establishing a connection between him and the author of these lines, to increase his chances of finding him in the timestream. And the final ingredient: a vial of Speedforce essence. It crackles with blue and white lightning, and Dick's fingers tingle from holding it.

A smell of ozone wafts from the vial as he unstoppers it.

Already the words are dissolving, together with his blood, as Dick adds the Speedforce essence to the mix. It hurts his soul to be erasing the journal entries in which Jason poured his heart out and described his feelings for Dick in embarrassing but charming detail—and through which Dick noticed just how much he misses Jason. He's memorized the words, as well as digitalized them, and yet a part of him feels like he's cutting off the last thread that binds him to Jason.

He can't let his attachment get in the way of it now. It has taken him years to gather enough Speedforce essence from all corners of the world, all so he could perform this ritual on the eve of Jason's death anniversary. Speedsters themselves would not help him, being too ready to warn him of the dangers. But Dick has made up his mind. There's no going back on his plans anymore.

He lights a match.

One way or another, Dick won't need these pages after tonight. He'll be free of Jason's ghost once and for all. 

He flicks the match into the bowl just as it is about to burn his fingers. Flames burst to life as if he had poured gasoline over the pages, vacillating between orange and green and blue. The fumes rising from the fire make him drowsy. He didn't know what to expect, but he doesn't fight it. 

_Forgive me, Bruce. Forgive me for leaving you, too._

* * *

A blaring alarm rips Dick back to consciousness. Cold wind is whipping his hair about his face and he nearly loses his balance as the ground beneath him vibrates. _Engines._ He's in the back of an aircraft, mechanically herding civilians and S.T.A.R. Labs employees alike inside.

There has been an explosion at the site, cause yet unclear. The director fears sabotage. While the League is investigating and securing the perimeter to make sure no tech goes missing that hasn't already, the Team is to provide relief.

Something itches in the back of his mind, like he was supposed to remember something—except that he doesn't know what that something is. He tells himself there's no time to ruminate on that feeling; getting these people to safety is what's most important.

Yet for some reason he's convinced that it's not as important as remembering.

Everything is wavering and dreamlike. Like a dream ripped from memory. People flow up the ramp in a steady procession, supporting each other, holding their wounds, coughing and bleeding. He assigns places and blankets and first aid kits where he can.

The flutter of a canary yellow cape catches his eye, then is gone, and he _knows._ The whole staggering truth of why he's here, at this point in time—with barely a recollection of the events leading up to it—comes crashing down on him.

Jason is going to die.

He abandons his post and races after Jason.

"Robin, stand down!" he hears himself shouting over the noise. 

This is the moment it all went wrong.

"There's still someone out there," Jason's tinny voice sounds far away over the faulty comms. "I can get them."

Dick curses. He has no hope of catching up; Jason has a head start and he's a runner, much more so than Dick ever was. 

"Team, continue as planned," he orders through his own comm link. "Leave Robin and me behind if you must."

"But Nightwing—" Artemis starts, but he cuts her off.

"Nightwing out."

He can't waste time arguing. He'd studied the footage of this moment like he'd never studied anything before in his life, replaying it for hours until his eyes were dry and itchy. The single shot that killed Jason had come from a southeast building but there had been no angle that gave him any details on the shooter. It's like the bullet had materialized from thin air.

If Dick had had more time, he could have gone after the shooter directly. That way, he wouldn't have to risk his only chance of saving Jason on a gamble: to see if he can catch up fast enough.

That way, he could also have learned the identity of the shooter, a question that's been plaguing him for years.

This is no use, Dick thinks. Jason is already helping the person out from the pile of rubble they were buried beneath. Scanning the surrounding area, Dick finds no space to hook his grapple into.

A sudden solution pops into his head.

It was a trick Batman had taught him in the early days of his training: that if a criminal was running away, he could use his grapple to tug at their clothes and make them stumble. If he got a good grip, he could even reel them back in.

Dick comes to a halt. He aims his grapple at Jason's back. He takes a steadying breath. Then another. As he focuses his breathing, a familiar calm washes over him. The world dissolves around him. There is nothing but him, the trigger, and his aim. 

He fires.

The grapple hooks into Jason's cape. Dick hopes it won't tear. Just as he pulls his line back in, a shot rings out.

Dick's heart stops. 

No. 

Please let him not be too late. He can't have been too late. Dick dreads having to cradle a dying Jason for the second time. Why did he ever think coming back here was such a good idea? At least this time, he could grant him a kiss to ease the pain of dying. It's the only thought that consoles Dick.

Jason hurtles toward him, colliding with his chest like a dead weight and knocking them both over. But instead of sinking into his arms, whistling from a chest wound and gasping for air through the bloody froth in his mouth, he struggles against Dick, scrambling to get back up.

"Fucking let me go, Nightwing. What the fuck?" Jason curses and Dick's heart _leaps._ Jason is still alive. 

The question is for how long. Dick may have altered the timeline, but they're not in the clear yet. If the sniper wants Jason dead, they might be taking aim anew.

"Robin, we need to get out of here," Dick urges, trying to drag Jason away. 

"What about the person I was rescuing? We can't leave them behind!"

Dick grows still, spotting the person in question lying motionless at the foot of the rubble. "I'm afraid it might already be too late."

"No," Jason breathes, no longer fighting off Dick. "I could have saved them."

Dick wants to lie and say he couldn't have, but the words stick in his throat. He feels cold. In his selfishness he traded one death for another, because to him, this anonymous person they're leaving behind means less than Jason does. He grieves for this person and sends out a silent prayer for them while guilt is settling heavy in his gut, yet saving Jason was all that mattered; knowing what he knows about the other timeline where he failed and Jason died, he would do it all over again.

Back on the ship, Jason is distraught. To him, it was a preventable death, one that is now on his conscience. He is right, of course, it had been a preventable death, but the cost would have been too great. The victim's family might disagree, but Jason is _his_ family, and he made his choice when he traveled back to this point in time.

Dick doesn't know how to comfort Jason without giving himself away.

He wraps a blanket around his shoulders and sits with him, surrounded by evacuees and members of the Team providing treatment and pain relief to those in need.

"It's not your fault," he says, keeping an arm around Jason and hugging him against his side.

"Do you want me to blame you?" Jason replies with no real heat. 

Dick had forgotten what Jason sounded like, despite listening to voice recordings over and over until the words lost all meaning. Hearing him speak now overwhelms Dick with a host of emotions even he can't name. They're all mixed up, past and present and future feelings shifting and intertwining, creating one explosive and mind-bending cocktail. It's hard to know what he _should_ be feeling in this situation, let alone what to do with those feelings.

Dick is surprised to see how young he looks, too. Locked in time as the memory of Jason had been, Dick hadn't noticed how much older he'd become in the meantime. He _feels_ younger, however, less burdened by the loss of Jason that he's been carrying around like a hole in his heart for the past five years.

"If you need to blame anyone, blame the shooter. No one else is responsible."

Even as the words come out of his mouth, they feel hollow. Jason must be thinking the same. He draws his knees to his chest and winds his arms around his legs.

"It doesn't change the fact that I couldn't save the person," he mutters.

Dick wants to say more but his consciousness is beginning to slip. 

No, not now! He can't go so soon. He needs to stay with Jason a little longer. It wasn't enough time. 

It will never be enough time. 

Dick is not ready to return to a life without Jason.

* * *

"No, please, not yet." 

Dick is thrashing and kicking, as if he could hang onto this timeline through sheer force of will. It's gone before he comes to, like nothing more than a wish-fulfilling dream. He commits every detail that lingers to memory: the dust and grit from the explosion that covered Jason's curls like a fine powdering, making them look prematurely gray; the smell of smoke that wafted from him like it must have from all of them, but beneath that, the finer scent of sandalwood and thyme from Bruce's cologne he must have borrowed and used to feel older, more masculine; the weight and warmth of his body as it leaned tentatively against Dick's, as if seeking comfort but not allowing himself to ask for it.

Dick would have given it freely if he'd had more time. Dick would have given him everything.

Whimpers tremble on his lips, tears on his lashes. His face is wet and so is the pillow beneath it. He hasn't cried in a while, but it usually happens when he's asleep. The dreams gut him, leaving him with a vague nausea and a heaviness that weighs him down like an anchor strapped to his chest. He lets it, at least until he has to pretend he's okay.

His thrashing is smothered by a pair of strong arms winding around him.

"Shh, it's okay, you're safe," comes a hushed whisper. "I'm here. Everything is okay now."

A sob wrenches itself from his throat.

As if in answer, he's enveloped tighter in the warm embrace. For a startled second, Dick thinks Bruce might have found him crumpled on the floor and carried him to bed, since he didn't fall asleep in one. Yet Bruce hadn't watched over his troubled sleep since Dick was eight years old.

This person smells differently, too. Dick can't place the scent, but it doesn't alarm him. Rather, it is vaguely familiar and seems to calm him down somehow.

The person rubs his back gently, making soothing noises.

"I'm sorry I left, but I'm here now."

Another sob escapes Dick. It's a tired sob, devoid of energy; Dick himself is depleted, like there's nothing more he has to give. He saved Jason. That ought to be enough. Maybe now he can close the book on this guilt, knowing that in another timeline Jason lives on because of him.

"That's it. Relax. You're good now."

Dick rolls onto his back to have a good look at the person. He should be weirded out that he let himself be cradled by a stranger, but nothing about this feels strange at all, like he's hugged this person many times, on many different occasions. 

"Was it that nightmare again?" the person asks, propped up on an elbow next to Dick and stroking his arm.

"Nightmare?"

"The one in which I die? In which you fail to save me?"

Dick's eyes widen. Suddenly it all clicks. Why this person feels like someone he's known forever although Dick is sure he's meeting him for the first time. 

Did he... did his consciousness travel to the future of the timeline he created by saving Jason?

"Little Wing?"

"That old nickname," Jason huffs and kisses Dick's knuckles.

"It really is you." Dick hears it now, the twang of Gotham's East End that has never smoothed over, no matter how long ago Jason escaped the life there. He is breathless with awe and a storm of emotions that would have crippled a lesser man. He is used to those by now.

He reaches out to brush Jason's bangs from his forehead, to touch his face. In the low light of the bedside lamp, the planes and angles of it stand in sharp contrast to the softness of youth he had seen just moments ago, before he woke up here. The slope of his brow, the dip beneath his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw all give him a refined appearance that is only emphasized by his sunken, tired eyes. His cheeks are even rough with stubble now; Dick finds that detail curiously charming.

Despite the fatigue that rolls off of him, Jason smiles and it's a genuine thing. He lets Dick's exploration happen, lets Dick read his face like a blind person, familiarizing himself with it.

"I came back as fast as I could. Sorry the mission dragged on for so long. I mean, you know how it is, but I still missed you like crazy."

_Not nearly as much as I missed you._

Dick is still disoriented from discovering his temporal displacement, so much so that he notices belatedly just how handsome Jason has become. How muscular, too. His shoulders are firm beneath Dick's fingers and wider than his own. He blushes.

He can't help himself: he cups Jason's face in both hands and kisses him. He finally, actually, truly gets to kiss Jason like he never could before.

For years, Dick has been living with the knowledge that Jason wanted nothing so much as to kiss him. That he had a crush so big his dying wish might as well have been a kiss from Dick. It was a failure on his part to deliver, and to make up for it he used to imagine all the different ways he might have wanted to kiss Jason had he made his intentions known. Instead of, you know, confiding and confining them to an encoded journal that Dick only found after Jason's death. When there was nothing more Dick could do about it.

Jason is surprised by the enthusiastic display of affection, but not taken aback. He wraps his arms around Dick's back and kisses him back just as fervently.

"I take it you missed me, too."

"More than you can possibly imagine."

"That's a lot then."

Dick kisses him again, years and years of frustrated yearning pouring out of him like water from a broken faucet. He winds his arms around Jason's neck and his legs around Jason's waist, rejoicing in how _big_ Jason has become. He'll always remember him as this scrawny kid, but like he is now, Dick doesn't feel so awkward about the thought of kissing him anymore. It used to feel like he'd be graciously bestowing a gift upon him, like a benefactor, instead of meeting him as an equal.

Jason has definitely leveled the playing field. In all of the five minutes that Dick has known him.

"That was one hell of a welcome home kiss," Jason says, breathless and grinning, and peppers more kisses on Dick's cheek, jaw, and neck. "Just the kind I like."

The word _home_ sticks out to Dick, as if implying that this is their home Jason has returned to, their home that they have been making together. Dick even thinks it's likely. In a future where Jason never died, he might one day have found the courage to ask Dick to go out with him. Apparently Dick must have agreed.

"Then again, you're always very enthusiastic about kissing."

"Like you don't enjoy it," Dick quips, thrilled with the notion that he knows this about Jason and gets to tease him about it like is only right and proper.

"More than you can possibly imagine," Jason echoes and presses his lips to Dick's again. "It's one of the reasons I married you, you know. So I'd get to stand in front of the altar and seal our vows with a kiss where everyone could see. It was the best kind of in-your-face moment. Like, suck on that, losers, Dick is mine now." Jason laughs, a deep rumble that sounds a little dirty. "Highlight of my life."

At any other point in his life, Dick might have told Jason off for talking about him like he's some trophy one can own. At this point in his life, however, Dick is dumbfounded.

"We're married?" he asks faintly. 

This is a development he did not anticipate. He lifts his hand from where it lies buried beneath Jason's body and true enough, an unfamiliar ring he did not notice before encircles his ring finger. Without prompting, he would not have recognized it as a wedding band. Instead of the gold Dick associates with wedding rings, it's made of a silvery metal with simple inlays of red and blue. 

If Dick's face had been hot before, it's positively glowing now.

"Woah, what happened to you while I was gone? Did you hit your head or something?" Jason lifts Dick's lids to check his eyes before Dick shoves him off. 

"Or something," Dick replies absently, rubbing his forehead as if to check for bumps.

"I'm just messing with you." Jason nudges him good-naturedly. "It's still so new to me, too. Sometimes I stop in the middle of whatever it is I'm doing and go, 'wow, we actually did that.' I still can't believe it. Glad to know you feel the same."

"Yeah." 

_'Wow, we actually did that' indeed._ Dick needs a moment to breathe. He goes from grieving over Jason's death for years to having married him in the space of what, to him, feels like a mere handful of hours. He guesses that anyone would understand if he can't adjust to that revelation right away.

Dick sits up. The need to see their wedding album is suddenly insurmountable. But at the same time he doesn't want to pore over pictures when he just got Jason back. He's been doing enough staring at snapshots of days gone by.

Winding his arms tighter around Jason, he buries his nose in the crook of his neck. He wonders if the memories of the Dick from this timeline are bleeding through to his own, because there is no way he can feel this comforted by Jason's presence when he has barely wrapped his head around the concept of Jason all grown up. And _married_ to him no less. He'll never get over _that._ He has to get used to it eventually, but has not the faintest idea on how to get started on that when he can't even remember the whole trajectory of their relationship.

It doesn't matter now. All that matters is that Jason is here. Dick never wants to let him go again.

"Someone's cuddly this morning."

"Feels like it's been years since I last saw you."

"I haven't been through any wormholes and the date on the paper lines up." The tip of Jason's nose is turning pink. "But it's good to know I was missed."

Dick rolls Jason on top of him, just to feel his weight, the solidness of his body. He feels so good in his arms, so right.

"Are you hungry? Do you want breakfast?"

"I think I could stay right here with you all day."

"What's with you? Last time you were all up in my face about planning our honeymoon the _second_ I got back. You made me promise, so we wouldn't let saving the world get between our well-deserved alone time again."

They haven't even had their honeymoon yet? Oh.

Dick's heart races. This is... this is more than he ever imagined. He may have pictured what it would be like if Jason had ever asked him out, how they would hold hands and eat ice cream together in the summer, how he would let Jason steal kisses from him if he managed perform a maneuver well enough—all in the name of incentives.

He's always tried to be realistic about the sequence of events if Jason had never died and Dick had never found his journals. Jason's puppy love would fizzle out eventually, when he would realize that Dick is a far cry from the idealized version he'd concocted in his head, or when Dick would no longer be charmed by it and they both grew up and apart.

He never actually thought about... what a honeymoon implies. But Jason no longer is the young teenager Dick remembers. He's a strikingly handsome young man who happens to be in a committed relationship with Dick.

Dick doesn't know how much of this he can handle. It's all so sudden. He not only gets to live knowing that Jason is alive and well. He gets to live _with_ Jason. As his _husband._ Talk about development.

"Guess the nightmare took all the wind out of my sails," Dick says and kisses Jason again softly. Because he can. And because he's taken a liking to it. "I don't want to rush a single thing." 

That includes his own marriage.

"Whatever your wish, I hear and obey." Jason rolls back onto his side and gazes at Dick with eyes so loving they make Dick's spine melt. "Still, I'm looking forward to getting away with you, just the two of us. Not stranded somewhere in Bullshit, Idaho, on some undercover mission we both find tedious."

Dick doesn't know if he's referring to a hypothetical case or one they actually worked. "At least we wouldn't have to pretend to be married anymore," seems safe enough to say.

"Yeah. I get to call you my husband and finally mean it." Jason touches his arm again and a pleasant shiver runs through Dick. "Then again, I've always meant it, you just didn't think I was serious."

"You were a child, Jason, and me not much older. What kind of sixteen-year-old is already thinking seriously about marriage? I thought you were pulling my leg. And after a while it was like it had become a running joke between us."

"In a way, it had," Jason admits with a smirk. "Like I actually had a chance with you."

"Apparently you did."

"What can I say? Must be my irresistible charm."

Dick smiles and runs his fingers over the scattering of freckles on Jason's cheeks and nose. "I'm sure the crowds must be lining the streets to get married to you."

"Too bad I'm monogamous." Jason kisses his palm, gazing at Dick with a kind of intent that Dick had only seen on him during missions, when his bratty exterior made way for the gravity of a given situation.

Dick still has a hard time believing that saving Jason turned into marrying him several years down the line, but he'll take it. He had been prepared to give everything to have Jason back—and in a way he had: he had given up the life he knew, left the people he loved behind.

He could not have known what the outcome of his ritual would be, but he certainly didn't expect to gain so much in exchange. He will have to find his footing in this marriage and in this timeline, where it's like he's lost years of his life. He might have to come back to the excuse of having hit his head. Or he might have to come clean about not being the Dick everyone remembers.

Despite this decision, Dick feels so much lighter, like he can soar through the air again. Like _he's_ the one who gained a second chance at life, not Jason.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Live While I Breathe" by The Moth & The Flame.


End file.
